But lawmakers were more alarmed by the CBO’s warnings about the approaching budget squeeze as baby boomers retire and begin drawing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. The CBO projected that Medicare, the health plan for the elderly, and Medicaid, the program for the poor, will together cost 5.9% of the entire U.S. economic output by 2018, compared with about 4.6% this year. Over the next 75 years, the CBO expects such entitlement programs to create a fiscal gap measuring 7% of GDP.

While people like to complain that there is nothing to watch on television, about 21 million American households may find that literally true in February 2009. On the 17th of that month, most TV stations will quit broadcasting analog TV signals over the air, and older sets will go blank.

Nick Trikolas plans to drop health insurance for his employees and give them money to buy their own coverage. He says doing so will put him in the vanguard of a movement by employers searching for answers to rising health costs.